This website includes a stunning collection of over thirty videos and essays from women who contribute to NASA's mission in many different ways. The stated goal for the site is "we hope that these stories will inspire girls everywhere to reach for the stars, and explore the myriad of opportunities available to them through pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics." Each story includes a biography, story and video about the woman highlighted. Stories include information about their background, academic degrees, and current work and future goals with NASA. The site includes a blog, Twitter feeds, and a Facebook page which you can subscribe to.

In the Classroom

Share this site with students when researching careers or space exploration. This is a perfect site for Women's History Month! Use information from the site for students to use as a model for researching career information. Have students use a tool such as Woices (beta) (reviewed here) to put a fictitious radio news story on a woman they learned about from this site. Woices also includes map features, so be sure students share the location where their researched woman is originally from.

Create a free account to this great resource site for teachers. After verification of your account, a login code is displayed for use with your students. Students use the login and type in their name before starting an activity. The site has resources for all subjects in the Middle school and High School levels. Audio support is available for the text. The engaging activities use lower-level thinking skills that engage higher order skills. The products work in the classroom in large part because teachers shape every phase of the planning and production process. This site uses standards and the Common Core to clarify the content in the core academic disciplines. The value of the resource lies in the focus on difficult to explain concepts that are enriched through the use of technology based resources using audio, video, and interactivity. Students "do" and "see" in order to understand the difficult concepts. Lessons have the following parts: classroom activity, web lesson, and project. InterActivities allow students to explore, apply, and analyze using online tools.

In the Classroom

Use the more than 200 Interactive activities and 855 ready-to-use lessons to provide technology-rich lessons to teach many of the most difficult concepts in the core subjects. Use the variety of assessment options that are found within each lesson. Note the Quick Launch numbers on the resource you will be using to direct students to the correct activity. Example activities include a Web Inquiry which is a guided and self-paced investigation that is built around a focus question.

This "magical," cloud-based video editing service uses your unedited footage and turns it into more exciting short movies to share with others (or random mashups of your footage.) The technology analyzes the footage using facial recognition. It is able to sort out pets from people as well as backgrounds, landscapes, and behaviors. This is one of the simplest video editing sites around. Simply upload your files, and Magisto does the rest. Uploaded videos are analyzed and edited to remove less interesting parts, including blurry sections or not-so-great footage. Choose from a selection of music to overlay the clip or upload your own. This is a device-agnostic tool, available on the web but also available for free as both an Android and iOS app. Use it from any device or move between several devices and still access your work. App and web versions vary slightly. Like using YouTube? Any video uploaded to YouTube can be edited automatically using Magisto's tools integrated in the YouTube site. Note: Uploading your video footage transfers rights to your content to Magisto!

In the Classroom

Use as an easy way to edit videos without using costly programs or difficult, time consuming applications. Use for any video that needs to be edited before placing on a wiki, blog, or site. Use for any student project, videotaping of classroom activities, or tapes of students explaining their experiment. Create a compilation video of short clips from throughout the year to share as an end of the year overview. Take long sections of video from a field trip and use Magisto to shorten to the most important bits. Magisto. Use this tool easily in your Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) classroom since all students will be able to access it for free, no matter what device they have.

Get swept away in an ocean of images and waves of powerful music in this unbelievable site about the ecology, grandeur, and necessity of the Great Lakes. Visit often because clicks can lead to a variety of different places. Learn the different ways the Great Lakes are a necessary resource and how they are currently under stresses affecting humans and many other species. This site requires a bit of bandwidth with the moving images, music, and narration. Be sure to try it out on your class computer in advance and limit the number of computers connecting at the same time. Be sure to check out all the topics, including invasive species, home, political, evaporating, and much more. Take a look at the link "Water Is" to view the list of topics. You will need headphones or speakers for the audio on this site.

In the Classroom

Use as an introduction to a unit on water or pollution. Use to introduce the chemistry of water (and how life on Earth would not be possible without it) by finding ways that water is affected by other materials and discussing the chemistry behind it. Explore in a civics and government class as a contemporary issue not constrained by international boundaries. Allow students the opportunity to explore on their own and report interesting facts and troublesome points to the rest of the class for further review and research. Use on Earth Day or as part of Earth Week activities. Divide younger students into cooperative learning groups to explore the site. Create letters to the editor, blog posts, and other multimedia or conventional items to portray what they have learned. Have cooperative learning groups create podcasts demonstrating their understanding of one of the concepts and their additional research. Use a site such as PodOmatic (reviewed here). Have students make a multimedia presentation using one of the many TeachersFirst Edge tools reviewed here.

Use Science Pipes to find graphs and charts of chosen biodiversity data sets. View the most popular or featured pipes on the front page of this site. Pipe your own data by registering with the site and logging in. Choose data sets and various ways to compare them. View such parameters as migration data, various states and counties, and species comparison. Determine the types of birds to view and create a graphic using all the parameters piped into that graphic.

In the Classroom

Allow students the opportunity to choose various data and view the charts that follow. Ask questions about various trends noticed and research behavioral and environmental reasons for better understanding. Assign a various types of data and allow time for groups of students to manipulate in different ways to learn how various data sets can be interpreted differently by scientists. From each question asked, use more data sets to learn more about various species of birds or environmental factors.

Find inspirational videos for yourself and to share with your students. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It was developed around fostering and spreading great ideas. This wiki also includes additional resources to use with the TED videos in your classroom. TED collects the thoughts of leaders in different fields, so you will learn things that you have never considered. Use TED talks to inspire, provoke and stimulate discussions in your classroom. Depending on your class and the age of your students, you may need to scaffold the videos by providing some background information for your students. This site also has a page titled "How to "Do" a TED Talk" where you and your students can view videos that give advice about how to create a TED type video.

In the Classroom

Once or twice a week use your projector or interactive whiteboard to show a TED selection to the entire class. Have the individual students write questions they have about the video/topic. Then have students write down the message they think the creator wanted them to know or think about from this video. Have students talk in small groups about the TED video and their questions and ideas. Have the student groups share out the important questions and thoughts with the whole class. After the class discussion, have the students write a group response, either on paper or on your class blog or wiki. Embed the video or add the link to your website for students to review on their own in class (be sure to provide headphones), or at home.

These videos make powerful writing prompts. After viewing a few videos in this manner, you may want to have older students select videos they want to watch (or you can assign them), and have the students respond.

Some of these videos would make the perfect starting point for an inquiry-based learning project. One of the final project choices could be to have students use the "How to 'Do' a TED Talk" advice to create their own video about their topic of inquiry. Share them using a tool such as SchoolTube reviewed here.

This site offers free book making activities -- the old fashioned way with paper and art supplies. Of particular interest is the project titled Making Books around the World in which students can make slat books, palm leaf books, accordion books, "papyrus" scrolls, and cloth books of many types. Tips for teachers make the book making projects accessible. Book plans are also available in Spanish.

In the Classroom

Take advantage of the free lesson plan to do final projects on research of a variety of topics. This is a great find for gifted students or ESL/ELL students since it is so varied and flexible. Challenge students to make books as an end of unit project in science, social studies, and math. Have a bookmaking contest in your classroom. Have students make creative books rather than a traditional book report. Share this site together with art teachers. Share this site with parents to use to create books at home.

This site is a great resource for teachers who need information on incorporating engineering into the science and math curriculum. The four main sections of the site include Engineers in Action, Teachers as Engineers, Engineering Materials, and Student Engineering Programs.The main page also includes links to answers of common questions on engineering and how it can be incorporated into a school's curriculum. The Engineering Materials section provides links to complete lesson plans and activities for classroom use as well as directions for interesting challenges for students to try.

In the Classroom

Share this site with students who are researching engineering as a career choice. Science teachers can use activities and lessons included on the site that align to current curriculum. Information offered on the site can be used as a resource for setting up engineering clubs in your school.

CyberWise provides tools for parents, educators, and kids to help them understand and use new media tools safely at home and in the classroom. The site provides an extensive collection of videos and resources that explain current media tools and ways to use them. Guides include Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Blogger, Prezi, Glogster, Facebook, Snapchat, Vine, and many others. Enter any tool name into the search box to see if there is a guide. Find information about media literacy, digital citizenship, cyberbullying, sexting, and more. The CyberCivics blog has the latest issues, trends, and tools to keep you an informed digital citizen. Sign up for the free newsletter and subscribe to the blog to stay current with information included on the site. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable. You could always view them at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the videos from YouTube.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Share videos on your interactive whiteboard or projector with students to discuss media tools and how they are using them, or show before assigning projects using current media tools. Challenge students to create an online "scrapbook" on cyber safety using Smilebox, reviewed here, or ask them to create a simple infographic using Piktochart,
reviewed here. Share videos with parents to help them understand current media tools and how to use them.

Looking to take bits of notes from a variety of web pages? Use Memonic to take notes or clip any web content. Easily take it with you wherever you go and share it with others (or the entire world.) Using Memonic allows much more efficient printing. The free plan allows up to 100 notes and 3 groups.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use this site to collect your thoughts and information for class projects, research, and idea/data gathering. Create a group for others to share information with for a subject area, class, or a common interest. Use with classes to allow students to comment to any page you assign for discussion. Students can find pages of interest about a specific content topic and comment their likes and dislikes. Look at various political, environmental, or ethical viewpoints by adding URL's for both sides of the argument and allow time for commenting and voicing of opinion. Learning support teachers may want to create notes together with students, annotating assigned text to show understanding and learn target vocabulary.

Keep track of what you have completed towards a goal. Everyday, iDoneThis sends an email asking what you have accomplished. Reply with a list of things completed. iDoneThis posts to your online calendar to keep up with your progress. Send an email to today@idonethis.com and it will post on the calendar day that the email is sent. Note that it does take some time for the information to appear on the online calendar and may not be viewable right away. Choose the time of day for your email to be sent asking you, "What have you done today?"

In the Classroom

Keep motivation going by listing the little steps that students have achieved towards a bigger goal. Email reminders offer a little nudge gently and with humor when no steps have been taken toward the goal. Boost motivation by going back through the calendar to see all the work that you have finished instead of just focusing on what has not been completed. Use this resource to help students keep track of the baby steps towards the completion of larger projects or goals. Be sure to identify the little steps that need to be completed in order to complete the actual project or goal. Learning support and gifted students alike can benefit from this organizational tool for time management. Let them try this tool to motivate themselves.

Find a new chart each day, based on real world events in different formats. Some days include more than one graph! The newer charts are shown first. Older charts are available on the site by following the "older" link. Topics vary from world news to sports to economics and more. There is a great variety of topics and chart types. When you click on the chart, a new page opens containing the chart and a description with difficult vocabulary underlined. Click on a word to learn the definition. You can also sign up to receive the daily chart by email.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Share a daily chart on your interactive whiteboard or projector and have students recreate the chart into a different format (bar chart to pie chart or line graph). Have students use a tool such as Hohli reviewed here. Ask students to analyze information included on the daily chart as a math journal entry. Create a class chart comparing student information to the daily chart provided. Use the daily chart as a class warm-up - discuss trends, information provided, information not included that might be useful, etc. Social Studies teachers may want to use the charts as a tie-in to current events. Reading teachers charged with teaching about charts as part of informational texts will find a treasure trove of examples here, especially as prep for BIG reading tests.

Sit back and enjoy an exquisite escape into the beautiful world of Claude Monet's paintings. The RMN-Grand Palais, and Musee d'Orsay transformed their 2010 exhibition, "Claude Monet 1840- 1926," into a virtual gallery space that transcends time and space. You have the opportunity to examine over 100 digital paintings. The zoom-in feature provides a unique opportunity to observe the brushstrokes closer than any security guard would ever allow! The graphics, animations and interactive features are outstanding. You will enjoy reading interesting tidbits of information about each individual painting, and exploring Monet's timeline available in the gallery. There is also an interactive journey that accesses your web cam and asks you to spill an inkwell, blow poppy petals into the wind, change the seasons of a painting and spook a bird into flight. The Exhibition Monet is an innovative and incredibly beautiful virtual gallery experience. Please be patient: this site loads a bit slow at peak times of the day. But it is WELL worth the wait.

In the Classroom

This site will bring the world of art history alive for students. Project and share the site on an interactive whiteboard or projector, and then break students into small groups to explore independently. Consider using this site before starting a unit on Impressionism or visiting a local art museum. History teachers might want to ask students to find examples of how industrialization may of effected Claude Monet's paintings. Use this site in science to show how light interacts and effects our environment (and of course, take an observational detour into the world of impressionism.) Consider asking students how scientific discoveries about color and light in the late 1800's affected this group of painters. Create a resource link on the school webpage to this site so that families can enjoy exploring Monet's paintings together at home.

Protagonize was originally a site for collaborative story creation. However, now you and your students can create your own "linear" or solo stories, poems, song lyrics, etc. Stories are available for others to comment on or add to. You can easily specify two endings like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series or leave the story's ending unfinished. Alternatively, choose to create different "chapters" of a story. Before writing, choose from many different story genres. If you prefer not to have outside input on the story, you can select "solo" writing. It is easy to change solo to collaborative writing, however. There is also an option to digitally link the chapters. The site is very flexible, and you can write poetry, drama, song lyrics, and writing exercises including role plays. Before writing, students set up "story guidelines" so that future contributors can see the parameters of the piece. Students can also view the work of others. Mature content is marked with a "Mature" marker. Students and other writers have an obligation to report inappropriate content. PDF format or RSS feeds allow the created work to be saved to another format.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

You may wish to set up a group or class account, so that you can keep a careful eye on what outside additions are made (use an RSS feed!) . Students would then need to sign their writing or their comments on other class members writing, with a code known by you. Or you can invite students through email, and then create a group on the program that would include your students; however this group would also be open to the public.

Create groups of students who would like to work together on a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story connected to a science or social studies topic. Have the students create the story guidelines and parameters. Once the students have started the story, have them use your projector and interactive whiteboard and get feedback from class members about the different directions the story could take. Publish the final adventures by using the page flipping publishing program, Youblisher, reviewed here.

Have your students create "solo" stories, and then have them switch to "collaborative" to receive comments and input from other members in their writing group or class. Publish the final adventures by using the page flipping publishing program, Youblisher, reviewed here.

In the Classroom

Build student literacy skills, reinforce what students are learning about Careers, and help students build the important reading strategy of connecting what they read to prior (classroom!) knowledge. Share this link on your class web page or wiki so students can select independent reading books to accompany your unit on careers. Don't forget to share the list with the school and local libraries so they can bring in some of the books on interlibrary loan. CurriConnects are a great help for teachers who have lost school library/media specialists due to budget cuts.

In the Classroom

Build student literacy skills, reinforce what students are learning about maps, and help students build the important reading strategy of connecting what they read to prior (classroom!) knowledge. Share this link on your class web page or wiki so students can select independent reading books to accompany your unit on maps. Don't forget to share the list with the school and local libraries so they can bring in some of the books on interlibrary loan. CurriConnects are a great help for teachers who have lost school library/media specialists due to budget cuts.

In the Classroom

Build student literacy skills, reinforce what students are learning about Inventions, and help students build the important reading strategy of connecting what they read to prior (classroom!) knowledge. Share this link on your class web page or wiki so students can select independent reading books to accompany your unit on Inventions. Don't forget to share the list with the school and local libraries so they can bring in some of the books on interlibrary loan. CurriConnects are a great help for teachers who have lost school library/media specialists due to budget cuts.

In the Classroom

Build student literacy skills, reinforce what students are learning about Geography, and help students build the important reading strategy of connecting what they read to prior (classroom!) knowledge. Share this link on your class web page or wiki so students can select independent reading books to accompany your unit on Geography. Don't forget to share the list with the school and local libraries so they can bring in some of the books on interlibrary loan. CurriConnects are a great help for teachers who have lost school library/media specialists due to budget cuts.

If you are looking for information about Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney Phil, Punxsutawney (location itself), and more - check out this website. There are LIVE webcams setup for February 2nd, video clips from previous years, a wealth of historical information, fun facts, photos, geographical information, and more. The reading level is a bit high for younger elementary students, but all levels would enjoy the video clips and photographs.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Challenge students to investigate a certain facet of this site (for example, Past Predictions) and create a multimedia presentation to share with the class. Have students use one of the many TeachersFirst multimedia Edge tools reviewed here. Share the projects on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Share this link on your class website for families to explore at home.

This site features five "ready to go" lesson plans related to Groundhog's Day, nearly all include standards, objectives, and even technology options! Lessons designed for grades K-5 include "Where Is Punxsutawney Phil? - A Groundhog Day Tag Game" and "A Shadow of Yourself." Grades K-8 will find the lessons "Find the Hidden Hibernators" and "Graphing Groundhog Predictions." And finally designed for grades 3-12 is "Marmots (Groundhogs) of the World."This site includes advertising.